Police registered a complaint against Raja Singh, a Bharatiya Janata Party MP from Goshamahal, Andhra Pradesh, on Tuesday for allegedly making provocative statements about a beef festival planned at Osmania University in Hyderabad. PTI reported that the case was registered by representatives of Leftist student organisations that have organised the festival, to be held on December 10 on the university’s campus. Osmania University police station's Inspector V Ashok Reddy told PTI that the students alleged that Singh had made a hate speech and was trying to instigate one community against another. Singh reportedly said that if the festival took place, he would turn Hyderabad into another Dadri, where a man was lynched in September for supposedly storing beef in his home.

Deccan Chronicle reported that Singh said he would stop the festival “at any cost”, and that he also criticised state BJP President G Kishan Reddy for being in favour of the beef fest, asking for Reddy’s removal. “In our party meeting, Kishan Reddy said that the party did not have any objection if someone hosted a beef festival; our party is very much for the protection of the cow, but here he says he is for holding the beef festival,” he said on Tuesday. Hyderabad BJP leaders have condemned Singh’s remarks. In response to Singh’s accusations, state party president Reddy said that when asked by the media if the BJP was going to stop the festival, he had said that the BJP had no objections if people were going to eat beef.